British Territorial cheeses are struggling at the moment.
Sales are slowing and when customers were surveyed asking what came to mind first for cheeses like Red Leicester, Cheshire or Wensleydale. The top response was “supermarket”.
Supermarket Cheeses
Needless to say the supermarket versions are generally a far cry from the true versions.
A supermarket Red Leicester will use pasteurised milk from all over the UK, be made entirely by machine and vacuum packed to mature. Compare with Sparkenhoe Red Leicester: Made with milk from the Clark’s own herd in Leicestershire, unpasteurised, made by hand and matured the traditional way, wrapped in cloth.
These cheese recipes go back hundreds of years, but needless to say the mass-produced versions cut corners at every stage .
PDO? No, No, No
Unlike many continental cheeses there are very few British PDO cheeses (Protected Designation of Origin). These means you can make your cheese anywhere, to any recipe and still legally call it Lancashire or Wensleydale. Sadly there’s too much money to be made from mass-produced cheese for there to be much demand for stricter recipes or processes.
We do feature two of the few PDO cheeses in this months Cheese Club: Blue Vinny and Single Gloucester.
Revivals
Cheaper, mass-produced cheeses meant traditional versions of these cheeses were all but extinct by the 1970s.
Thankfully a generation of cheesemakers in the 70s and 80s revived the traditional recipes. Today Appleby’s Cheshire, Kirkham’s Lancashire, Cornish Yarg, Yoredale Wensleydale and others preserve recipes that go back hundreds of years.
Eat Them Or Lose Them
Neal’s Yard has launched a campaign: ‘Eat Them or Lose Them’ encouraging more people to try territorials. There are discussions to replace the term ‘territorials’, which is seen as old-fashioned and confusing with something else, possibly ‘heritage’ or ‘traditionals’ to communicate the history behind them.